What do you like about this
street (we're in Eno's North London base)?

"Living in this street is interesting because there are
so many beautiful women passing by all the time. I don't know why. I can't
believe it's because I live here. Beautiful women are at the cutting edge of
culture just by the way they move, the way they look. You can't imagine that
kind of woman living in Wimbledon."

What are your favourite
smells? (His latest album, 'Neroli', is named after a pricey, grandad-style
hair oil.)

"You may not recognise the names. Methyloctane
carbonate. It's a smell exactly between violets and motorcycle dope - you know the smell of racing motorcycles? That has
very powerful associations for me. Karanal which is like a striking flint, or
when you switch an electric fire on. They're both used in perfumes. My
favourite natural smell is Philadelphus or mock Orange. Balsam Poplar as well.
That grows in Austria and Italy. I'll tell you a smell that's going to sweep
the world. It's called 'sea moss algae' in the labs. It's very fishy and it's
in Calvin Klein's Escape and Issey Miyake's new perfume. You couldn't have sold
it ten years ago. It's so determinedly non-floral."

What are your
favourite games?

"Scrabble and snooker. I like Scrabble because
I'm really good at it. I've got a lot of unbeatable strategies. And variations
to the rules. One variation is to play with all the tiles face up so that you
can choose what letters you want. That makes for a hard, exciting game."

Would you make a good chat show host?

"No, terrible. I'm
not interested in chat. I'm not interested in people's lives unless they're
particularly extraordinary. The only chat show moments I've enjoyed were Grace
Jones on Russell Harty and Oliver Reed on After Dark, just the
feeling that something was happening that wasn't supposed to. My idea of the
dreariest chat show host is Michael Aspel. He asks such stupid, unanswerable
questions and then does this raised-eyebrow thing as if to say, You're a bit
weird. I like Clive Anderson's show but I'm afraid I'm not that witty."

When were you last drunk?

"Last night. I had some wine
with dinner and then went into the garden with my book. I couldn't focus on the
page. I gave up the reading and just lay back in the deckchair with my eyes
closed. And everything began to spin, you know, that awful sick feeling. I
haven't had that in years."

What are U2 like in the studio?

"Committed. They care so much about doing well. And they don't require
any diplomacy on my part. A lot of a producer's time is taken up by managing
personalities, but U2 are such good friends that isn't an issue. I suppose what
you want to know is do they take any drugs? Not as far as I know. Are there a
lot of girls about? No. They do tend to start late, if that's any good."

Have you ever undertaken therapy?

"No. The idea that a
rich, white, western male should have problems worth dwelling on is a little
ridiculous to me. I don't really like that concentration on the self. Plus a
lot of the people I know who are involved in therapy in some way are not what I
would call particularly successful as human beings. Nor becoming any more
successful. Its results don't seem very good."

Have you heard much
of the music that cites you as influential (The Orb, etc.)?

"Yes.
I'm very flattered. I think it's positions I've taken rather than actual
records that have been an influence. I like some, but that's not important
really. John Cage has been a big influence on me but I don't actually like much
of it."

Which public figures do you most dislike?

"Rush Limbaugh, this very successful right wing American radio host. I think
he's very dangerous. Baroness Blatch, the Tory education minister who wants to
get kids to read Alexander Pope and fucking stuff like that. How awful for
those kids."

When did you last dance?

"Yesterday. I
dance everyday with my little daughters. We invent new dances. They come up
with some corkers which they try to teach me. But if you mean in a public sense
on a dancefloor... I suppose it was David Bowie's wedding."

What
do you always carry with you?

"An electric screwdriver. One of
those you can test the mains with. It's a beautiful little thing. I've had it
about 30 years. Credit cards, magnifying glass... oh and of course my notebook.
I've always had that with me since I was about 14. I almost forgot that in the
same way you'd forget you've always got you arm with you."

Do you
enjoy shopping?

"Oh yes. Here in Kilburn we have a very good
selection of those bankrupt stock shops. I like browsing in there. New kinds of
fish spatulas, devices for slicing eggs into funny shapes, I've got a lot of
those. All bound for Oxfam."

How law-abiding are you?

"Very. Hardly anything I do falls outside the law. I smoke a joint
about every two years... that's still illegal isn't it? Sexually most things
are legal these days, so I suppose I fall within the law there. I always pay
for my tube ticket. I'm not interested in joyriding."

What papers
and mags do you read?

"Lots. New Scientist, Herald Tribune,
Weekend Guardian, Art News, Art Forum, Whole Earth Review, The Spectator.
And then there's a whole load of stuff I read occasionally, from the New
Statesman to Big Ones and Forty Plus (Note to readers who've led
sheltered lives: the latter two are 'specialist' porny mags whose titles are
self-explanatory). I was in Spain recently and got a whole load of
pornographic comic books. I must have them here somewhere... (goes to look
for them, fruitlessly)"

What are you frightened of?

"I'm quite a coward. Any physically violent situation terrifies me.
Although I did once save a woman from being mugged, so perhaps I think I'm more
cowardly than I actually am."

What was the last sporting event you
watched?

"All year I've wanted to watch a football match on TV.
It became an obsession. When I'm watching football I go on to automatic, I stop
thinking. It's a real holiday for me. Eventually I did get to see a little of
the Cup Final. Do you watch Transworld Sports? That's great. I love
watching sports where I don't know the rules."

Is there a piece of
music which changed you?

"I'll give you three in different ways.
'It's Gonna Rain' by Steve Reich showed me that you get a lot of musical action
from very sparse musical components. Also, I was seven in 1955 so I was born on
the very cusp of rock and roll, and I have great affection for a record like
Richard Berry's original version of 'Louie Louie', such a weird, radical sound,
like music from another planet. Plus a piece of music called 'Paragraph Seven'
by Cornelius Cardew (English avant gardist) which has very few rules and
can be played by anybody yet still always sounds rich and beautiful and, in a
way, the same. Cardew became a Maoist and disowned it as bourgeois. I had a
rather nasty argument about it with him. He was killed by a hit and run driver
in Camden who was never caught."